What’s
Needed To Win Real Fights and Make
Techniques Work: Combat Mindset.By William
Wong ND, PhD, Member World Martial Arts
Hall of Fame

Joining
O Sensi Jack “Papasan” Stern
for breakfast the Saturday of the World
Multi Martial Arts Hall of Fame banquet
this year (06), he and his student and
likely successor GM Allah Freeman were
laughing at an inside joke O’ Sensi
had just pulled. Seems that seated at
the table before I arrived had been a
new member of the hall a very nice and
respectful marital artist O Sensi had
asked a question or two of. It was the
answer and reaction to the questions
that had the remaining crew at the table
laughing and talking when I got there.
Seems O Sensi had inquired as to the
young masters fighting experience. “Have
you ever hit anybody for real”?
Seemed to have been the question. With
the quick follow up... “ Have you
ever had to kill anybody”? To which
the visibly flustered young master excused
himself smiling and left the table quickly.
Since I came on the story somewhat second
hand I apologize if I’ve gotten
any of it wrong but it does serve to
illustrate the point of this piece...
Before technique, before execution, before
anything we learn or teach will work
on the street or battlefield we MUST
have a Combat Mindset!

Now
don’t go thinking that a Combat
Mindset is just the joy some of us
have in beating aggressive human beings
into disjointed piles of quivering
flesh (sounds good to me) but, Combat
Mindset is much more than that. If
that is all that is needed to win fights
then the Germanic Tribes of old would
have soundly beaten the smaller less
muscular, less visibly aggressive soldiers
of the Legions of Rome. But we know
who won those fights. (If you don’t
see the first 20 minutes of the movie
Gladiator and you’ll get my drift).
Combat Mindset is not being a “hitter” as
we used to say on the Brooklyn streets
I grew up in. Combat Mindset is not
entirely being aggressive in your fighting
although aggressiveness is a component
of Combat Mindset.

The first
point of a Combat Mindset is that we
have to accept that we may have to actually
use the martial art we practice to really
and truly hurt people. I know that to
some of us raised in the less well thought
of parts of our cities, just to make
that statement seems like a stupid idea. “Of
course I’m ready to use the art,
why the hell else would I be studying
it for”! But to many folks brought
up in easier to live in neighborhoods
and states, the martial arts are a sport
or pastime, like golf or masturbation.
When asked why they are learning the
arts the answer is somewhat vague from
wanting more fitness, to coordination
I’ve even heard this answer: “well
I’m learning it so that I never
have to use it”. To which my incredulous
look held back what I really to say.

Second
point of Combat Mindset; always be ready
to fight and as Bruce Lee taught always
be ready to die. It is true that the
coward dies a thousand deaths. In the
French Foreign Legion the soldiers are
taught early on that they are already
dead. The reality of actual combat can
be such on the streets as it is very
much so on the battlefield. This second
point calls for being constantly observant
and having your senses and more importantly
your intuition feeling for any person,
persons or situation on the horizon that
may be a danger to you and yours. Intuition...
yes if you are meditating and practicing
the yin side of your art, your intuition
should be developing along as well as
your techniques. Though I have to say
that the longer I remain in the martial
arts the less and less I see classes
start and finish with meditation, and
the less teachers I hear who actually
know their ass from their elbow about
matters spiritual or the spiritual roots
to their arts! Your intuition is your
advanced radar telling you that it’s
not the biker at the bar who’s
going to try to kill you but the little
old lady sitting there who’s Prozac
is causing side effects and about to
drive her into mania (violent uncontrolled
behavior).

Next
we have controlled aggression. If we
fly off the handle, lose our cool and
go into a rage, how long will that energy
last? Will that type of energy keep us
aware of our surroundings and dangers?
When a commander directs an attacking
force, he is directing aggression; keeping
aggression high but controlled and directed.
In this way changes in the combat situation
(i.e. new dangers coming from new directions)
can be easily picked up on and countered
all in the natural flow of the action.
Blind rage is exactly that: blind and
unaware of the total situation.

Now we
come to one point that I know very few
people teach. Always aim for doing one
level of damage higher than you actually
want to do. If you want to hurt go to
cripple, if you want to cripple go to
kill, if you know you need to kill then
have that solidly in your mind as you
go into combat or you’ll do what
many a GI did on Korea and point your
rifle towards the ground and not hit
anybody. (Seems their mothers had told
them that their daddies and big brothers
had fought WW2 to end war and so sonny
was supposed to be safe and never have
do an aggressive act. What a shock it
must have been for these kids to be at
war 5 years after the “second war
to end wars”)! It is an old adage
in asian thought that the human mind
has circuit breakers that will blow before
too aggressive an act is done. In war,
Germany and Japan both took measures
to overcome this hesitation to do great
harm. Both German and Japanese troops
then were injected regularly with testosterone.
Japanese troops in the second world war
were sadistically treated by their superiors
and over and above that, injected with
a combination of uppers and testosterone
to increase their aggressiveness and
willingness to do harm. Shit rolls downhill,
they were treated sadistically and so
they acted against their adversaries
sadistically. The killing of nearly every
living thing in the Chinese city of Nanking
is evidence to the success of those techniques.

Being
civilized people those of us from the
nicer areas of the country, are not used
to having to really “put a hurt” on
someone and when called on to do so generally
fail miserably. How many stories have
we heard through the years of tournament
champions getting their heads and asses
handed to them by some “untrained” street
fighter. There are too many of those
stories to count.

Lastly
we have a principle from Physical Education
that has become part of military training
doctrine especially with the SEALS. In
PE parlance the principle is: “To
be effective and specific, all skills
training must done be under game conditions.” In
Navy Seal lingo: “train hard fight
easy”! Yes you can have your slow
phased training to develop the movements
needed in a particular skill but after
it’s learned, the practice must
simulate real combat as best as is possible.

In my
art of Wing Chun we have a training technique
called Chi Sao or sticking hands. In
these sessions, contact is maintained
with an opponents arms at all times,
techniques are able to be sensed as or
before the opponent does them and the
counter (a combination parry and counter
strike(s)) is instantaneous and it is
in turned parried and countered one after
the other back and forth. The sessions
can become very intense, and somewhat
painful if one doesn't develop the feel
for when and how to parry.

In the
mid 70’s after getting just ok
at my Chi Sao, I happened to take up
a job as a weekend bouncer at a big sleazily
bar in Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay.
I was fresh out of the service, 158 pounds
soaking wet, wearing love beads and a
pony tail instead of my green utility
uniform and Heinz pickle jar shaped soft
cover. So I did not look like a typical
bouncer. That being the case, when ever
some drunk or hot head wanted to show
off to his gal he would choose me to
pick on out of all the bouncers since
I was by far the smallest. (The rest
of the bouncers were football linemen).
We also had a good number of full bar
room brawls (all of which we put down
in less than 2 and 1/2 minutes)! I got
lots of practical experience with people
trying to seriously hurt me in hand to
hand fighting and what I had discovered
was that after every fight and brawl
I had a let down feeling of disappointment
because none of the encounters were as
hard or as tough as doing Chi Sao with
my Gung Fu brothers! Train hard, fight
easy.

Every
martial artist must instill a Combat
Mindset into his overall outlook of the
arts. I’ve only scratched the surface
on the Combat MIndset. The real master
in teaching the Combat Mindset is the
late Col. Jeff Copper. For those of you
not into combat shooting Col. Cooper
was the “O Sensi” of what
is known as “The Modern Technique
Of The Pistol”. Combat shooting
is its own modern marital art. His must
read work is a book published by Paladin
Press titled: “Principles of Personal
Defense”. Other must read books
on Combat Mindset are Hanshi Stephen
Kauffman’s translations of the
Book of Five Rings and the Art of War,
(published by Tuttle). Avoid all other
modern translations of these books as
they have been watered down to business
speak and psycho babble for the Corporate
Business crowd. But, of those 3 books
start with Cooper as he provides the
most solid and well thought out principles
to make every technique you throw really
work. (www.paladin-press.com). For you
technique hounds, there is not a single
physical technique in any of these books.
But if you learn and understand the principles
taught in them you will have made all
of your existing techniques thousands
of times more effective.

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